


Never Be Mine

by Anonymous



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angband, Fluff, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Fluff without Plot, M/M, Quenya doesn't have a word for nuclear fusion, Romance, Suicidal Thoughts, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, star-crossed lovers, yes i know their sun is an angel-carried fruit but the stars aren't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 05:43:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12857988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Sauron dreams of the bright future they won't have together. Maedhros doesn't have dreams anymore.





	Never Be Mine

“I can’t hold an entire game board in my head. I’m… tired.”

“Tired?”

“That happens to people whose bodies are more than a whim.”

“You’re awake, though. Talking to me.”

“If you don’t understand I’m not going to explain it. I can’t just remember where all the pieces are. I’d lose track a few moves in.”

“But you were fine last time I was here.”

“Two months ago.”

“Have you considered not changing so fast?”

Maedhros smiles. “I wish you knew how you sound to everyone who’s not millions of years old. Yet.” But the ‘yet’ is an afterthought, now. He doesn’t imagine that far into the future anymore. He barely thinks as far as the next month, the next year at the most.

Mairon is different; Mairon speaks of the next century, of the next several millennia, of eternity after the war. Mairon is alive in a way Maedhros hasn’t been in years, alive and constantly striving. Maedhros remembers being like that.

“I’ll get it eventually,” Mairon says breezily. “You’ll explain it someday when the war is over and you have nothing left to lose.”

Maedhros raises his head, sets his jaw, tries to glare at him. He would like to be defiant if there were anything he could do—or even pointlessly, futilely defiant, if only he weren’t so tired. But he is tired and it wouldn’t help and so he stays silent.

Mairon strokes his hair, which is growing back from the last time they shaved his head. It’s coming in too slowly. He heals slowly now. He’s dying.

“I could carry a table and—”

“No, you couldn’t,” says Maedhros, “and it would only give you another game or two if you did.”

“Why are you doing this to me?” Mairon whines. He sounds as sincere as he ever is.

“Oh, trust me, if I could be immune to all torture and totally unaffected, I would be.”

Mairon laughs bitterly. Maedhros is at a bad angle to make out his face, with Mairon clinging with one hand to the chain and bracing himself with both feet against the cliff, straddling Maedhros. He has, probably not as an intentional mercy, pulled Maedhros’s raw and bloody back away from the rough cliff face; the wind passes through the narrow gap and makes him shiver.

“I just want you to last longer,” he says. He sounds actually sad. He sounds downright miserable. Maedhros is almost tempted to apologize.

“Too bad,” he says instead. “I wouldn’t even if I could.” He doesn’t, moment to moment, hope for death anymore, but that’s only because he’s given up on it. He isn’t any happier than he was when he used to imagine that the extra weight would rip the chain free of the cliff and send them both falling to their deaths. If he could die, he would.

“I’ll miss you,” says Mairon, “when you’re gone to the everlasting darkness.”

“Of course. Who wouldn’t?”

“Your brothers.”

“They just have too much sense to wind up here with me. That’s all.”

“Not what I meant.”

“…Oh.”

Mairon strokes Maedhros’s cheek. He’s gentle, as if Maedhros is something precious and fragile. “I love you,” he says. “I wish you were mine to keep.”

Maedhros doesn’t bother to remind him that he could leave Melkor and free Maedhros and run. He’s said that enough times. It doesn’t change anything.

“Shall we play something simpler, then, pet?”

“I don’t think we’d enjoy it—I spy with my little eye something golden.”

“Arien.”

“Of course.”

“I spy something beautiful.”

“I didn’t know you had a mirror up here.”

“I was looking at you.”

Maitimo laughs and laughs and laughs until he starts sobbing. Mairon murmurs things that are meant to be comforting and when that doesn’t help he sings, soft and sweet. Maedhros doesn’t care anymore about showing weakness in front of Mairon; he just cries himself out. He reaches up and takes Mairon’s hand and holds as tight as he can, for what little comfort that brings.

“You’re still beautiful to me,” says Mairon, “beautiful and precious, my pet. Not outside anymore, but that’s no fault of yours. That’s only a fact about who owns you. My precious, precious pet. You’ll never break. You’re indomitable. You’re going to die because you’ll never serve Melkor. You’re going to die because there is no pain great enough to make you abandon your convictions or your loyalties. You came to fight us without any hope of success because no odds are bad enough to daunt you. You are indomitable and unbroken and unbreakable and beautiful.”

Maedhros shivers. “How are things?” he says.

“I tortured an orc to death yesterday,” Mairon says brightly. “It was so much fun! The poor orc. She screamed so nicely. Did you hear?”

“I hear a lot of screams here. I wouldn’t know which voice was hers.”

“Well, anyway. She was fierce. You’d’ve liked her.”

“Why did you kill her?”

“Because she attacked another orc and tried to rape him. Can’t have the orcs just lawlessly fighting with each other.”

“If you and the orcs were in some faraway land without Morgoth or the war, would you treat them any differently?”

“They wouldn’t all need to learn to fight—of course some would, but not all—and they’d be able to do more other things. They could improve their technology; they could build wagons that push themselves and boxes of captured lightning that have sense-sharing with each other over distances greater than the distance from here to Arien and boats that sail among the stars without magic.”

“Without magic? How would they fly? Very big sails?”

Mairon laughs, then goes quiet for a moment, then answers. “Maybe, but not the sort you’re thinking of. Sails to catch starlight, not wind. But that wouldn’t get you up to the starry sea. You’d want to… I know this sounds strange, but you’d want a fire on the bottom of the boat. A very big one.”

“And the boat wouldn’t burn?”

“You could not possibly sail to the stars in a wooden boat. …It might burn anyway if you made a mistake.”

“Is there anything in the sky worth visiting?”

“Oh, yes. All the stars are. If I had enough of the right sort of boats to take all the people I wanted, I could leave Arda and go find a nice star and make my own world that I alone would rule. It could be like this one used to be, half dark and half light, and I could keep my orcs in the dark and you could have a sun—I’d take you with me. I’d make you a palace in the twilight, a thousand times more beautiful than anything in Tirion. I wouldn’t need you on display like this; you could sleep on cotton sheets every night. Or silk or satin if you’d prefer. I’d keep you healthy and let you rest when I wasn’t around to enjoy hurting you. If I could bring enough other elves with me, I’d let you rule them. Or you could have some of my orcs if you wanted them. We could have open borders and equal territory and compete to see who could win over the most orcs.”

“And a third country ruled by orcs,” says Maedhros, “for both of us to compete against?”

“Sure. We’ll divide the night half of the world in three.”

“I would miss my brothers.”

“Maybe a dayside elven kingdom for you, then. Or twilight, if the night side is going to be warm enough for orcs to live on. Do you think your brothers would like a never-setting sun made of fire?”

“Would it be very smoky?”

“No. It’s… star fire is different from ordinary fire. It… burns smaller things by making them marry each other.”

“Are you sure.”

“I’m sure your language is deeply inadequate. Anyway, you can rule one of the kingdoms on my world and I’ll let you recover in between tortures.”

“Or you could _not_ torture me!”

“That sounds less fun.”

“Mairon.”

“But would you like it? Being king of part of my starlit world?”

“I can imagine worse fates.”

“I want to show you the stars. If not for Melkor and the war…”

“I’d want to see them up close.”

“With me?”

“I wouldn’t know how to build a star boat without you.”

“I would teach you if not for the war. I would teach you everything. I would teach you enough to build your own city of towers each a hundred stories tall, with self-pulled magnetic wagons to carry people to the city center or to any of its most beautiful buildings or wherever you think they’d want to be able to go without having to walk. I would teach you and you would build according to your own vision. And I would watch that vision take shape and I would know you even more deeply.”

“If knowing all that would let me defeat Morgoth, are you sure he deserves your service? Or does he only seem strong because he had such a head start?”

“It’s not… it’s that he’s the best chance I have of getting what I want. I don’t want what the Valar want and he’s the strongest person around who also doesn’t want that. If the Noldor were stronger, or if the Noldor were willing to make common cause with him—”

“He killed my grandfather and stole our property.”

“It is completely clear to me why you won’t, but it would still be better if you did. It only serves the Valar to have us all fighting each other instead of them. They’ll wait for one side to win and the other to be horribly weakened and then they’ll finish off whoever’s left. That’s what will happen.”

“And it’s terrible, but as long as it ends with Morgoth dead it’s better than letting him win.”

Mairon sighs. “It’s a shame, really. If I were enough, on my own—or if the Noldor could win this—or if I could be very sure the Valar wouldn’t even try to follow us to the stars…”

“Then you’d make common cause with us and we’d have no reason to fight.”

“And I wouldn’t need to keep you captive. You could be free. You would be mine anyway, given the choice, if not for Melkor.”

“If Morgoth disappeared tomorrow, you wouldn’t let me go.”

“…I would definitely take you off this cliff and let you rest. I might trade you for your people’s cooperation—I think otherwise they’d fight me and we’re positing they can defeat at least one Vala. Or are we supposing Melkor just disappears for no reason? I might forget about you while I was trying to figure out why that happened and if it could happen to me or the Valar.”

“Admittedly, our relationship wouldn’t be my first priority, either.”

“But once all that was dealt with…”

“We’d figure out something tolerable for both of us.”

“I wish I could keep you forever.”

“I wish I were well-treated enough not to die, too.”

“Not that it matters, but I love you.”

“Of course. I love you, too.”


End file.
